SOURCE: MacDonald, R. D. “Thomas Chandler Haliburton's ‘Machine in the Garden’: Applying Leo Marx's Criticism of America to Haliburton's Clockmaker.” Canadian Review of American Studies 19, no. 2 (summer 1988): 165-80.

In the following essay, MacDonald compares Marx's ideas on technology to Haliburton's philosophy that Nova Scotians should be more progressive in the development of technology, yet remain conservative in their traditional values.

In a recent symposium, Robert L. McDougall has puzzled over T. C. Haliburton's being a reactionary tory and yet an advocate of technological progress: “How come … we find this [early nineteenth-century Nova Scotian writer] whose notion of utopia seems to be an agrarian economy, stable to the point of inertia and supported by an industrious yeomanry benevolently watched over by country squires—how come such a man takes such an interest in building railways and moving things around?”¹ McDougall believes that Leo Marx's Machine in the Garden: Technology...